Aaron Donald will lose ‘unrestricted’ status if he doesn’t return to Rams by Tuesday

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Defensive lineman Aaron Donald of the Rams reacts after a tackle against the Arizona Cardinals during the second half of the NFL game at the University of Phoenix Stadium on December 3, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

OWINGS MILLS, Md. – The Rams got closer to Aaron Donald, but not in that important, pen-to-paper way.

Training camp this week has been diverted to a quaint town north of Baltimore, but that didn’t motivate Donald to end his holdout Monday and travel down from his home near Pittsburgh, even for some coffee.

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The questions now become, exactly what will convince Donald to show up, and will that return take place before the start of the regular season? The likelihood of the latter seems to be decreasing.

Donald, last season’s NFL Defensive Player of the Year, wants a new contract to follow his current deal, which expires after this season. That’s been the holdup since the end of the 2016 season. With no agreement on the horizon, Donald has held firm in his desire not to attend Rams training camp.

A small amount of clarity will arrive Tuesday. Unless Donald shockingly arrives, he will lose his right to become an unrestricted free agent next March, if the dispute stretches that far. While that might seem notable, it was more of a footnote Monday as the Rams held a joint practice with the Baltimore Ravens.

“I don’t think anything is going to change with that in the near future,” Coach Sean McVay said after practice. “I’ve had a little bit of dialogue with Aaron, and we’re hopeful that we’ll get something done, but I don’t think that there’s any realistic deal to that Aug. 7 deadline, as a date that really changes anything.”

Donald now can only be a restricted free agent next spring, which means the Rams would be able to either match any offer that Donald accepted, or decline it, let him leave and receive a first-round draft pick.

The reality is, the Rams won’t let it get to that point. If they haven’t signed Donald by February, they almost certainly will apply their franchise tag to him and give him a one-year, guaranteed contract. The likelihood that Donald will reach market in any form in 2019 seems astoundingly low.

Then again, it once seemed unlikely that the dispute would extend this far. The Rams have said that they are prepared to make Donald the highest-paid defensive player in league history, but McVay indicated recently that contract talks have not progressed much in the past couple weeks.

The next big day is Thursday. If Donald misses the Rams’ preseason opener at Baltimore, the team can fine him an amount equal to one game, which is 1/17th of his base salary of $6.892 million.

On top of that, Donald accrues a $30,000 fine for each day of training camp he misses, and already has an $80,000 fine on the books for the mandatory minicamp he missed in June. Should Donald miss all of camp and preseason, he would risk a total fine of approximately $2.4 million, according to a team source.

Last year, when Donald reported the day before the season opener after a camp-long holdout, the Rams chose not to collect those fines, but they would be much higher and more punitive this year.

Multiple national NFL reporters, no doubt well-sourced within the Donald camp, have started to note the possibility that Donald might not return to the Rams at the conclusion of camp, as he did in 2017.

Negotiations are all about leverage, and Donald could attempt to force the Rams’ hand by sitting out multiple regular-season games. He missed the opener last year because he reported the day before. Missing games this year would be hugely punitive to Donald, but also would be a public-relations disaster for the Rams as they attempt to sustain the momentum of last year’s run to the NFC West title.

So, the Rams wait, and will continue to practice without their most-dominant defensive player.

“We talk about it from time to time,” quarterback Jared Goff said, “but we don’t focus on it. We’re here with the guys we’ve got here, but we’d love to have Aaron as soon as it gets done. He’s an incredible part of our team, incredible player, incredible person and someone we want here. But they’re dealing with that.”

ALL CALM

There were no incidents between Rams cornerback Aqib Talib and Ravens receiver Michael Crabtree during practice, which was news.

Two of their prior meetings, when Talib played with Denver and Crabtree with Oakland, included scuffles after Talib snatched chains off Crabtree’s neck. The two matched up opposite each other several times Monday but there didn’t appear to be any heated words. Talib was not available to reporters after practice.

“We talked about it,” McVay said. “Aqib is a smart player. He’s a leader. I think he knew that there would be a lot of eyes on that specific situation and I trusted, based on our conversations, that he would be smart about it, and he certainly was. A lot of respect for Aqib.”

CAMP NOTES

McVay indicated that he likely will hold Goff out of Thursday’s preseason opener, and perhaps a few other top players also. … The Rams and Ravens practiced for two hours in 90-degree weather with high humidity, and they will do it again Tuesday. … Rams safety Lamarcus Joyner, who missed the previous two practices in Irvine with an Achilles injury, returned to action.

Rich Hammond was a high school senior when the Rams left town in 1995, and now he's their beat writer for the Southern California News Group. A native of L.A., Rich broke in at the Daily Breeze as a college freshman and also has covered USC, the Kings, the Lakers and the Dodgers. He still loves sports and telling stories. Don't take the sarcastic tweets too seriously.